Forgive and Forget? | UnitedHealth CEO and Luigi Mangione

The episode uncovers the devastating impact of profit-driven healthcare practices through personal stories and analysis of the UnitedHealthcare CEO situation. Key discussions center around the ethical dilemmas posed by health insurance denials, forgiveness in Christian teachings, and the systemic failures affecting patients' lives.<br><br>• Examination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO situation and its implications  <br>• Debate over justice and the consequences of treatment denial  <br>• Personal anecdotes illustrating the human cost of insurance  <br>• Discussion on profits over patient care and its ethical ramifications  <br>• Exploration of forgiveness in the Christian faith in relation to corporate accountability  <br>• Insights on conversations about blame and human sinfulness

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's talk about the UnitedHealthcare CEO situation.
Health insurance.
Many of us have been screwedover, are getting screwed over,
are afraid of getting screwedover.
This guy, luigi, from what weknow so far, suffered some very
disappointing circumstances.
I believe it has to do withsome treatment he wasn't able to

(00:21):
get in reference to a backinjury, but those details are
still coming out.
I want to welcome you toGuilt-Free Faith.
My name is Jimmy James Johnson.
Guilt does not live here.
You're at the wrong place.
Let's talk about theUnitedHealthcare CEO suffered
fatal harm and there's a lot ofdebate about whether it was

(00:44):
right, whether it's justified,whether perhaps it should even
be illegal.
Is it some type of self-defenseor self-defense after the fact?
And what do we really do abouta justice system in which we, as
the common people, areconstantly seeing the wealthy,

(01:07):
the privileged, the powerfuljust get off?
It doesn't seem like there'sanything they can't get away
with.
When we're talking about healthinsurance with friends and
family, and when I was in medschool in a whole variety of
circumstances, I don't know manypeople that feel great about

(01:29):
their health insurance.
It's expensive, unreliable, ithas loopholes, it has the
uncanny ability to rejecttreatments that you need
desperately, I would say in myopinion, there are certainly a

(01:49):
great deal of cases where thesedenials, these
pre-authorizations, all of thesegains that boost the profits of
healthcare companies, literallycome at the cost of people's
lives.
We're not talking just aboutsuffering.
We're not talking just aboutspending a few extra minutes on

(02:12):
the phone to get a bill settled.
No, we're talking about couldbe years and decades of
suffering.
It could be being denied atreatment that you and your
physician have very good reasonto believe will work.
It can be situations whereyou've already used a treatment

(02:32):
that you believe was approved orwas authorized and it actually
did help you, and now they'reclawing back and refusing to
actually go through with thereimbursement.
Have you experienced any ofthese shitty situations?
Because you're not alone.

(02:54):
In fact, I dare say that mostof us have had these unpleasant
situations with insurancecompanies.
And what can you say?
This type of profits overpeople is egregious, because
what it does and the harm thatit inflicts on people is not

(03:16):
imaginary, it's not immaterial,it's not hard to see or measure.
All you have to do is go andspeak with people that have
health issues, big and small,and you'll get an outpouring of.
I wasn't able to get thismedicine.
I wasn't approved for thisprocedure.

(03:39):
I needed this desperately, or Ihad a loved one that needed
this and were allowed to passaway in the midst of this absurd
back and forth between me andthe insurance company or
actually, let's face it, mostpeople.
When you're in that state ofillness, you're not even in a

(04:01):
position to engage in this fight, which is obviously part of the
strategy of these healthcarecompanies.
Did this guy, because of hisdisappointment or one might even
say injury, perhaps even alife-altering injury, then take

(04:22):
matters into his own hands andstrike at the person in charge,
as opposed to going through thelaw or the civil courts?
Or, let's be honest, fining amulti-billion dollar company,
couple grand or a million, it'sa drop in the bucket, right,

(04:44):
it's the cost of doing business.
It doesn't make any difference.
If we were looking strictly atthe dollars and cents, we can
understand why these peoplethough some of us may call them
sociopaths, people lackingethics, lacking morals, of
course, just looking at thebottom line, yeah, let's collect

(05:04):
insurance premiums then not payfor the treatments as often as
we possibly can.
It's egregious Whether or notyou believe that universal
healthcare should be covered orwhat the mechanism should be.
I think we all can agree thatto be treated as numbers on a

(05:25):
spreadsheet when your life is onthe line is, at the very least,
distasteful and, at the verymost, cold-blooded murder.
As I saw the other day onsomeone's video comments, you
can kill people with a PDF.
You could kill people withemails.

(05:47):
You can kill people with fraud.
You can kill people even bylobbying for a decrease in
regulations that give you morefreedom to do whatever the hell
you want to your customers.
So let's look at it from theChristian standpoint.
What is Christ saying?
The message most of us get inthe Bible is you're just

(06:10):
supposed to forgive, forgive,forgive, forgive.
And then somewhere along theline, somebody added in and
forget.
I don't recall that exactphrasing being used in the Bible
but hey, whatever floats yourboat, right?
I guess?
If you could truly forgivesomeone, then perhaps you would
also forget the offense.

(06:32):
We know Christ was focused onforgiveness.
I think most of us, even with abrief and cursory knowledge of
the Christian faith, we've heardsome of these buzzwords.
We know that Christ talkedabout forgiveness, forgiving the
people that were persecutinghim, the people that ultimately

(06:56):
would execute him.
He talked about forgivingneighbors, forgiving all kinds
of transgressions that you thinkare worse than what you're
doing.
Price tried to get this pointacross, saying, instead of
worrying about the speck In thatperson's eye, their small sin,

(07:17):
whatever they're dealing with,first take out the moat in your
eye.
Here you are with this serioussin that you're carrying or
continually engaging in.
We want to point to someoneelse.
Right, you, you, you didsomething wrong, don't worry
about me.
What about you, you, you, whatabout you, you, you and most of

(07:45):
us have witnessed this cycle ofconversation which, of course,
really goes nowhere.
When I was growing up, I hadpeople in my household who this
was like the kind of song anddance that they would go through
One person would accuse theother of not doing something
right and the other person wouldsay, yeah, okay, maybe, but

(08:07):
what about you?
What about you?
What about you, okay?
And as someone growing up andlistening to this, I saw it was
just really fruitless.
Because, first of all, thesetype of conversations never end,
because if you're trying to beright, if you want to win the

(08:28):
argument, there is no way to winit, because people engaged in
those types of conversations arenot going to see that ground.
They're going to either denythat what they're doing is
problematic or they're going torope you in with them, like, hey
, I do this, but you do this.

(08:49):
Okay Now, is it true that, infact, you are doing something
wrong and they are doingsomething wrong?
Absolutely, why?
Because we're all doingsomething wrong.
There's nothing unique orshocking or mysterious about
this, and yet Christ had toaddress it.

(09:14):
Because it's human nature towant to take the spotlight off
of us and say, oh no, let's lookat what someone else is doing,
because, let's face it, towhatever degree, we're involved
in sin.
Oftentimes that's eithersomething we're just doing by
habit, something that we may bedoing as an addiction, something

(09:36):
that we just have a differentopinion on, or we don't really
think is wrong, but someone elseis bringing it to our attention
as being sinful or bad.
In all of these cases that Ijust mentioned, it can be very
hard or impossible todiscontinue that sin.
If the only solution is okay,once I close up shop on all my

(09:59):
own sins, then I can get aroundto criticizing other people.
Christ made it clear thatyou're never going to get
through taking the board out ofyour own eye.
There are differenttranslations for this, but
basically mind your own businessand once that is perfected,

(10:23):
then go on to judge others andsit in judgment.
But the joke's on us becausewe're never going to reach that
level of perfection.